Producer Responsibility

Producer responsibility is aimed at ensuring that businesses/producers who manufacture and/or import products and place these products on the market assume responsibility for those products; be it packaging, electrical and electronic equipment, batteries and accumulators, or vehicles; when they reach their end-of life. Based on the polluter's pays principle, producers of such products should bear some of the waste management costs of collection, sorting or treatment and recycling and/or recovery to reduce the overall impact of such waste on human health and the environment.

This approach results pursuant to the EC Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste, EC Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), EC Directive on Batteries and Accumulators and Waste Batteries and Accumulators, and EC Directive on End of Life Vehicles (ELVs). In view of the growing concern about their impact on the environment, these directives were identified as priority legislation in the European Union's Fifth Environment Action Programme.